One of the things I like about reading books of essays is that you can just put it down for an indeterminate amount of time and come back later when you want to continue. One of the things I dislike about books of essays, as I did for this one, is that some of them inevitably feel like some kind of filler.

Most of the essays are very good; many of them prompted me to look into the subjects being discussed, and I walked away with a long list of films I'd like to explore. Some of them feel a bit presumptuous about the amount of knowledge a person should have, like they had originally been created specifically for a text or a project where people were already familiar. That's not a bad thing, but it is frustrating when you feel like someone is speaking over your head for no good reason; it just highlights a necessity for some context in a few areas.